3. November 2022. • INTERACTIVE

REBOOTING AT REBOOT DEVELOP BLUE, DUBROVNIK 2022

After a few unfortunate years of silence, we finally got to the 7th edition of the Reboot Develop Blue Conference.

Our team headed to the beautiful town of Dubrovnik, because Reboot is definitely a place to be!

Finally, we saw our colleagues with whom we have recently been forced to work remotely. Considering the smiles on everyone’s faces, it was obvious that we were all very eager to exchange ideas and plans in a familiar atmosphere, and at the same time to educate ourselves and to be informed about hot stuff in the industry.

All of the announcements that this year’s Reboot would be at an even higher level and with even stronger content were fully justified. This unique event really connects the game industry and development events in Europe and thus belongs to one of the largest events of this type in the world.

As it was planned, in three days we were there, we had the opportunity to see about a hundred presenters. The topics of the lectures were divided into a couple of categories, and it was interesting to see how various topics came together: industry, tech, engineering, business, art, design, psychology…

Networking was very successfully supported by large B2B and indie exhibition areas so that there were many exclusive, but also spontaneous business opportunities.

Fighting for Democracy

Although the first lecture was part of the industry category, it was much more than that.

One of the keynote speakers, Hendrik Lesser (remote control productions CEO), presented his analysis of games in the context of politics, war, violence, complementary transmitted values and the moral responsibility of game creators towards the society in which we live in. The fact is that gamers start their journey at a very young age, so it is very important to be aware that, by creating a certain content, we have a long-term effect on users and that we are implementing certain habits that may cross the line.

Lesser mentions how games shape our thinking and can very quickly become political entities of action. The power we have, by creating such content, should be used for higher values such as culture or education.

Furthermore, he considers the games to be part of the culture, thus cultural techniques of today. They are not only entertainment but also carriers of ideas, attitudes, emotions and cognitive processes. They create social bonds or destroy them, and the virtual world we create is very, very real to the users! Why not create an utopia instead of an apocalypse?

It is necessary to take games seriously, to discuss them, to provoke topics that will be reconsidered so that they can ultimately be a weapon (!) of democracy and the fight for a better future.

Motion Capture and Entertainment Industry

At the exhibition area our dear colleagues from Digital Kinetics MoCap Studio presented their concept and possibilities of MoCap in the development of video games.

The studio is located in Zagreb, Croatia and deals with motion recording and motion transfer into digital form. Such information is being used to bring character models to life in 2D or 3D computer animations. It is a studio that offers a full service of recording with Vicon cameras, post-production logistics, and it is certainly the largest studio of this kind in Croatia. Their clients are mostly from the game world, but this process is more and more used in TV production, commercials, and feature and animated films.

They were accompanied by the Zagreb gaming studio GD Entertainment with their game Mora, a cute fantasy game in a beautiful world where you survive only if you have a spell at your disposal. The fact that it is based on ancient Croatian mythology is also magical!

Virtual Production – everything is possible!

As we mentioned earlier, we heard a lot about new trends in video production, so one of the best innovations we have to mention is virtual production on set (OSVP). By using the LED screens and working with OSVP, the real and digital worlds are in constant interaction by using traditional production tools with the help of virtual and augmented reality, CGI and game engine technologies. Unlike shooting on a green screen, for OSVP all 3D graphic elements must be prepared in advance. The virtual background and foreground contain part of the physical scenery that continues onto the virtual scenery and are being captured directly with the camera, using the lighting and colors of the virtual scene. All of this, of course, helps the actors tremendously because they can finally see where they are and get into their roles more easily.

The presentation of the new revolutionary approach was brilliantly done by our dear colleagues from Livada Production (Ivor Hadžiabdić, Boris Hergešić and Bruno Golubić). Related to VIPROS (Virtual Production Studies) which is a collaboration between leading film, CGI and digital arts and universities offering related programs. Its goal is to explore the concept of virtual production and its impact on the filmmaking process, as well as the opportunities and challenges that virtual production brings to higher education.

The focus of the project is interdisciplinary activity and training in virtual production. VIPROS project partners educate students to give them a better understanding of the different areas involved in virtual production such as production design, VFX, cinematography, CGI, 3D animation and game engine programming.

As a case study, they presented a virtual production of the opening scene of the film in the development called Shadow by director Antonio Nuić and producer Boris Matić. This noir detective story begins with a scene in a restaurant and is a hybrid of a virtual background and a real studio space. They presented the complexity of this procedure in detail and defined their plans. We are excited to see the overall process and finale of this great project. We wish them the best of luck and we will certainly return to that project in more detail in one of our future posts.

The beginning at the end

In this post, we turned things around. The first lecture at the conference was not only an introduction but also an announcement of what is yet to come.

The main organizer of Reboot, Damir Đurović, gave a great speech, proud of his team that maintained their moral and strength during these challenging times, that we believe are behind us. Staying on top of the game (literally) is not easy when the future seems uncertain, it was even more necessary to trust the process and stay in the loop of communication and knowledge exchange. Judging by the ovations of the visitors, we all shared Damir’s enthusiasm and thanked him, as he did us, for the reunion in even greater numbers. We will support the big plans of the organizers and are looking forward to what the new Reboot edition in April 2023!